Sunday, January 17, 2016

Enjoy
this week’s Q and A, which features answers to questions on Nigerian English
expressions like “Buhari’s body language,” Nigerian English salutations like
“say me well to,” and emergent telephonic expressions like “screen touch.” Also
find the difference between “read a course” and “study a course”— and much more.

Question:

In
Nigeria it is now usual to talk of President Buhari’s “body language” to mean
fear of what he stands for and can do. We say things like, “the civil service
is getting better now because workers fear that Buhari’s body language shows
that he doesn’t tolerate corruption and laziness.” Is that standard usage? I
wonder you haven’t written about it. Maybe it’s because you haven’t noticed it?

Answer:

I
have noticed it. No one who pays attention to Nigerian politics will fail to
notice the incipience of the expression at around the ascendancy of the Buhari
presidency. Nonetheless, I had assumed that people who used “body language” in
the way you pointed out weren’t ignorant of the Standard English meaning of the
expression; I thought they were merely intentionally contorting and expanding
the expression’s traditional meaning.

As a
communication scholar, I teach body language, which we call kinesics or kinesis
in the scholarly literature. It basically means the communication of messages,
both subtle and overt, through the movement, in part or in whole, of the body.
If I shake my head to show disapproval, I am using body language. If I spread
my five or ten fingers to call someone a bastard, as we do in Nigeria in
moments of inflamed passions, I am using body language. And so on and so
forth. That’s how the expression is understood in international Standard
English.

The
notion of “body language” as the deterrent effect that the fear of a person
inspires is uniquely Nigerian. You can’t read a person’s “body language” if you
don’t physically see the person and observe their bodily motions. I had
imagined, perhaps incorrectly, that people who talk of “Buhari’s body language”
know enough to know that no one would have any clue what the heck they are
talking about outside Nigeria.

My
own sense is that whoever came up with the expression was consciously imbuing
an existing English expression with a new meaning in the service of a new,
unlexicalized reality. But then many people started using the expression with
no consciousness that the meaning associated with it is intentionally
nonstandard; that it is a strictly made-for-Nigeria expression.

I am not, by any means, discouraging the use
of the expression. I actually think the re-semanticization of the expression is
evidence of linguistic creativity.

Question:

"This
is to confirm that the above named has been offered Provisional admission into
[name of university] in 2015/2016 Academic Session. The Candidate has been
admitted to read: Doctor
of Human Medicine 100 level in the Faculty/College/School of College of Health
Sciences."
Sir, I quoted this from the letter of confirmation of admission I received. But
a friend of mine said "The candidate has been admitted to study" is
more appropriate than "to read". Is he
right?

Answer:

He
is wrong. In British English it is usual and perfectly permissible to use “read”
to indicate the act of being a student at a university—or at any higher
education institution. I typed “admitted to read” on Oxford University’s
website and came across several matches, including this: “The number
of undergraduates admitted to read Chemistry at Pembroke over the last few
years has typically been around six per year.” A recent obituary in the UK Telegraph also contains the following:
“After leaving school, she was admitted to read Chemistry at London University…”

American
English speakers, however, don’t use “read” in the way British English speakers
do. In America you are “admitted to study” a course, not to “read a course.” Maybe
that is what your friend was hinting at. However, since British English is the
standard that Nigerians privilege and emulate, I don’t understand why your
friend thinks “read a course” is wrong.

Question:

Is
it “screen touch” or “touch screen?

Answer:

Until
I received this question I was never aware that Nigerians call touch screens
“screen touch.” Your question prompted me to search “screen touch” on search
engines and on such social media networks as Facebook and Twitter. I found the
phrase only on Nigerian-themed websites and by Nigerian social media handles.

The
use of “screen touch” in place of “touch screen” is an example of a kind of
error linguists call lexical metathesis or spoonerism; it is a kind of slip of the tongue in which the usual positions of words in a sentence are transposed.
Another common lexical metathesis in Nigerian English is the use of “plate
number” in place of “number plate,” the British English term forvehicle
registration plate—or what American English speakers call license plate.

Question:

Recently,
I said “say me well to your wife” to a friend of mine, but he laughed at me.
When I asked why he laughed, he said you once wrote that the expression was
wrong. But isn’t “say me well to…” an American English expression? Please
clarify.

Answer:

First
of all, I think it’s impolite to laugh at people because you think they’ve
committed an error in speech. And, no, “say me well” is not an American English
expression. Here is what I wrote in my November 11, 2012 article titled “Top 10 Peculiar salutations in Nigerian English (I)”:

“1. ‘Say me well to him/her/your family,’ etc.
Nigerians use this ungainly verbalism when they want to send expressions of good
will to someone through another person. This uniquely Nigerian English
expression would be puzzling to native speakers of the English language because
it is structurally awkward, grammatically incorrect, and unidiomatic. I have no
earthly idea how it emerged in Nigerian English. But it certainly isn’t a
British English archaism or a literal translation from native Nigerian
languages, nor is it Biblical English or a distortion of contemporary British
or American English—four of the dominant sources of Nigerian English that I
have identified in earlier write-ups here.

“Whatever
it is, the expression has attained idiomatic status in Nigerian English and
should probably be patented and exported to other parts of the English-speaking
world as Nigerian linguistic invention in English.

“Some
examples of fixed phrases that native English speakers use to express the same
sense Nigerian English speakers convey when they say ‘say me well to…’ are
‘give my hello to him/her,’ ‘tell him/her I said hi,’ ‘give him/her/your family
my (warm) regards,’ ‘give him/her my best wishes,’ ‘say hello to him/her for
me,’ etc.”

Question:

Distinct
people still spell that name as "Mohammed” or “Muhammad,” or
“Mohamed," yet they are all referring to the same person in their write-ups.
I am not even talking about Muhammadu Buhari. I mean the prophet. Does it mean
they're not talking of the same man when they choose any of the variants?
Usually abused by non-Muslims?

Answer:

Well,
it's because they are all using Roman orthography to write a name that is
originally Arabic. Every time you use a different orthography to spell a name
that was originally written in a different orthographic tradition, you often
have several variants. It's normal. Names originally written in Latin alphabets
also have different variants when they are written using different scripts such
as Arabic, Cyrillic, Chinese, Thai, etc.

Having
said that, it helps to note that, over the years, “Muhammad” has emerged as the
preferred rendition of the name in English. Even in the Oxford English
Dictionary the name is written as Muhammad. Much older variants like Mahound or
Mahomet are now considered offensive and are avoided by careful writers, except
when references to the dim and distant past (when the variants were in vogue)
are inevitable.

Question:

Is
it in appropriate to say "please make sure" in a formal letter? I
wrote a letter to my principal asking him to provide reagents for practical
examinations, but when I said "please make sure you provide the actual
reagent listed above" he was annoyed and said I wrote in a commanding
tone. Is it true? I thought the “please” in my sentence suggests politeness.

Answer:

Saying
"make sure" to your superior is inappropriate, even imperious. That's
the language adults use when they talk to children. It's a command, not a
polite request. You could have written something like, "Please provide the reagents listed above."

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About Me

Dr. Farooq Kperogi is a professor, journalist, newspaper columnist, author, and blogger based in Greater Atlanta, USA. He received his Ph.D. in communication from Georgia State University's Department of Communication where he taught journalism for 5 years and won the top Ph.D. student prize called the "Outstanding Academic Achievement in Graduate Studies Award." He earned his Master of Science degree in communication (with a minor in English) from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and won the Outstanding Master's Student in Communication Award.

He earned his B.A. in Mass Communication (with minors in English and Political Science) from Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria, where he won the Nigerian Television Authority Prize for the Best Graduating Student.

Dr. Kperogi worked as a reporter and news editor, as a researcher/speech writer at the (Nigerian) President's office, and as a journalism lecturer at Kaduna Polytechnic and Ahmadu Bello University before relocating to the United States.

He was the Managing Editor of the Atlanta Review of Journalism History, a refereed academic journal. He was also Associate Director of Research at Georgia State University's Center for International Media Education (CIME).

He is currently an Associate Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media at the School of Communication and Media, Kennesaw State University, Georgia's fastest-growing and third largest university. (Kennesaw is a suburb of Atlanta). For more than 13 years, he wrote two weekly newspaper columns: "Notes From Atlanta" in the Abuja-based DailyTrust on Saturday (formerly Weekly Trust) and "Politics of Grammar" in the DailyTrust on Sunday (formerly Sunday Trust). From November 2018, his political commentaries appear on the back page of the Nigerian Tribune on Saturday.In April 2014, Dr. Kperogi was honored as the Outstanding Alumnus of the University of Louisiana's Department of Communication. His research has also won international awards, such as the 2016 Top-Rated Research Paper Award at the 17th Symposium on Online Journalism at the University of Texas, Austin, USA.